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Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Arroyo made an adjustment to increase the number of Ground Balls he allows and reduce the number of fly balls right around the time the Reds started putting more emphasis on defense, but the formula doesn't account for it, so it must be something out of his control and nothing he did. It was actually a rather stark reversal of those rates with the only exception being the year he was sick. I think Arroyo has a lot more to do with it than anyone who is a slave to the math wants to give him credit for.

"All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it." --BABE RUTH

Having better players makes "the right time" or "the big hit" happen a lot more often. PLUS PLUS

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by mth123

Arroyo made an adjustment to increase the number of Ground Balls he allows and reduce the number of fly balls right around the time the Reds started putting more emphasis on defense, but the formula doesn't account for it, so it must be something out of his control and nothing he did. It was actually a rather stark reversal of those rates with the only exception being the year he was sick. I think Arroyo has a lot more to do with it than anyone who is a slave to the math wants to give him credit for.

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

I think it's a combination of regression and fatigue.

The thing about regression is that a player should not regress so much that his overall numbers balance out with his career averages. If a career 4.00 ERA pitchers has a 3.00 ERA in the first half of the season, he should not be expected to pitch a 5.00 ERA in the second half so that his numbers wind up around 4.00. He would, rather, be expected to pitch around a 4.00 ERA in the second half, giving him something like a 3.50 ERA.

Leake's August numbers certainly are, in part, attributed to regression. But the rough patch he's going through indicates probably some fatigue as well. He's a much better pitcher than his August numbers indicate.

"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda

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Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by mth123

Arroyo made an adjustment to increase the number of Ground Balls he allows and reduce the number of fly balls right around the time the Reds started putting more emphasis on defense, but the formula doesn't account for it, so it must be something out of his control and nothing he did. It was actually a rather stark reversal of those rates with the only exception being the year he was sick. I think Arroyo has a lot more to do with it than anyone who is a slave to the math wants to give him credit for.

Re-examine the 2008/2009 seasons and reconsider whether such a narrative actually fits. Arroyo didn't begin to outperform his peripherals until the Reds defense was dramatically reshaped-this after the timeline envisioned through a prism of a slavish rejection of things other than era.

"This isnít stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by jojo

Re-examine the 2008/2009 seasons and reconsider whether such a narrative actually fits. Arroyo didn't begin to outperform his peripherals until the Reds defense was dramatically reshaped-this after the timeline envisioned through a prism of a slavish rejection of things other than era.

Not looking at ERA nor am I slave to the hypothetical facsimile. Look at his batted ball types and note how fly ball percentages dropped from mid to low 40s to mid 30s and how Ground Balls increased from mid 30s to low to high 40s. Heck, he even said at the time he was working on increasing his ground ball rate.

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by Brutus

I think it's a combination of regression and fatigue.

The thing about regression is that a player should not regress so much that his overall numbers balance out with his career averages. If a career 4.00 ERA pitchers has a 3.00 ERA in the first half of the season, he should not be expected to pitch a 5.00 ERA in the second half so that his numbers wind up around 4.00. He would, rather, be expected to pitch around a 4.00 ERA in the second half, giving him something like a 3.50 ERA.

Leake's August numbers certainly are, in part, attributed to regression. But the rough patch he's going through indicates probably some fatigue as well. He's a much better pitcher than his August numbers indicate.

Your point about regression is one that I think people miss. It is exactly like you said, expected regression is pitching to your career numbers and your ability, not simply the opposite of how good/bad one has been.

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by mth123

Not looking at ERA nor am I slave to the hypothetical facsimile. Look at his batted ball types and note how fly ball percentages dropped from mid to low 40s to mid 30s and how Ground Balls increased from mid 30s to low to high 40s. Heck, he even said at the time he was working on increasing his ground ball rate.

I know what you were looking at and they (batted ball tendencies) changed before his ERA did and his ERA didn't change until Wayne radically altered the defense behind Arroyo.

And do you think it just might be possible that someone could argue that arroyo's ERA is significantly impacted by the Reds defense without being slavish?

"This isnít stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

I know what you were looking at and they (batted ball tendencies) changed before his ERA did and his ERA didn't change until Wayne radically altered the defense behind Arroyo.

And do you think it just might be possible that someone could argue that arroyo's ERA is significantly impacted by the Reds defense without being slavish?

You mean 2008, the year when his walk rate, his HR/FB rate and his Line Drive rate all went to his Cincy highs (2011 health driven outlier excepted). Yeah, I'd say he made more bad pitches that year when he was changing his style and it showed up in his ERA. Once he figured it out, those rates stabilized.

"All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it." --BABE RUTH

Having better players makes "the right time" or "the big hit" happen a lot more often. PLUS PLUS

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by kaldaniels

Your point about regression is one that I think people miss. It is exactly like you said, expected regression is pitching to your career numbers and your ability, not simply the opposite of how good/bad one has been.

No one argued that regression meant his numbers would be equally skewed in a negative way beyond his peripherals in such a way as to balance out his unsustainably positively skewed numbers.

The argument is that as his luck metrics normalize back to his career norms, his era will fall in line with what one might expect from his peripherals. Sometimes it actually does balloon negatively because variation is a wild ride while sometimes it just takes a longer time of "normal" performance to dilute a few months of really good or really bad. The argument was simply that given a large enough sample size his numbers will regress to expected ones.

That's exactly what we're seeing. As his LOB% has tracked back toward the mean, and his HR/FB% and BABIP climb back to normal Leake, his ERA is moving toward the 4+ range that characterizes his history.

"This isnít stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by mth123

You mean 2008, the year when his walk rate, his HR/FB rate and his Line Drive rate all went to his Cincy highs (2011 health driven outlier excepted). Yeah, I'd say he made more bad pitches that year when he was changing his style and it showed up in his ERA. Once he figured it out, those rates stabilized.

No. I meant the two seasons in which the Reds went from 24th worst defense in the majors to the 4th best defense in the majors and Arroyo's ERA dropped almost a run despite one of his worst K/BB ratios of his career.

"This isnít stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by jojo

No. I meant the two seasons in which the Reds went from 24th worst defense in the majors to the 4th best defense in the majors and Arroyo's ERA dropped almost a run despite one of his worst K/BB ratios of his career.

Sure, the defense got better and Arroyo adjusted and became more of a ground ball pitcher. You don't think that adjustment mattered?

"All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it." --BABE RUTH

Having better players makes "the right time" or "the big hit" happen a lot more often. PLUS PLUS

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

Originally Posted by mth123

Sure, the defense got better and Arroyo adjusted and became more of a ground ball pitcher. You don't think that adjustment mattered?

He adjusted to become more of a ground ball pitcher before the defense got better. It didn't impact his ERA until the defense got better. I think when a pitcher's game is predicated on inducing contact, the defense behind him matters a lot. And again, there is nothing slavish about that is there?

"This isnít stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner

Re: Mike Leake may be running on fumes...

I know what you were looking at and they (batted ball tendencies) changed before his ERA did and his ERA didn't change until Wayne radically altered the defense behind Arroyo.

And do you think it just might be possible that someone could argue that arroyo's ERA is significantly impacted by the Reds defense without being slavish?

Of course the better defense helped, but to argue that that explains everything is overly simplistic. There was a lot more to it.

1. Arroyo adjusted his pitching style to take advantage of the better defense, as mth123 has stated. Other Reds pitchers didn't benefit from that same defense, which supports this notion. Bailey underperformed his peripherals over those three seasons from 2009-2011. As did Harang his two years with the Reds during that period. Cueto didn't improve with the defense, until he adjusted his pitching style in 2011. And Volquez got much worse, despite the better defense. So it clearly wasn't just the defense, or else all the other starting pitchers would have benefited as well.

2. If you look closer, except for 2008 and 2011, Arroyo really didn't improve all that much. He was very similar in terms of how he compared to the rest of the league. Meaning his ERA went down as scoring went down across the league. From 2007-now, Arroyo has produced between a 105-111 ERA+ every year except for 2008 and 2011. So he hasn't improved that much, compared to the league. Scoring has just gone down everywhere.

So yeah, the Reds improved defense has helped Arroyo, but that's not the whole story, not even close.

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